The Real Story of the Birds and the Bees

What is the real origin of sexual reproduction? Evolutionary theory can tell us.

Chris explains in this BBC article that you can look at evolution as a passing of information needed for survival. The more you know, he says, the better off you are, and some of that knowledge gets passed down in DNA.

So if evolution is a learning process, and those lessons are passed from generation to generation, the most efficient way for a species to evolve with this information is sex, which means choosing a good partner that has reached maturity by making good choices for survival.

"Acquisition and maintenance of information are necessary for evolution to work—remembering the old and imaging the future," he says.

Can Cellphones cause Cancer? Not so fast...

Recent findings from the U.S. National Toxicology Program claim to prove a link between cellphone radiation and cancer. Chris responds in this piece by Faye Flam for Bloomberg View, saying the evidence just isn't there, and the researchers should've "set a very high bar of evidence before they announced a threat to public health."

Though certain kinds of radiation, like X-rays, gamma rays and ultraviolet rays, do cause cancer by damaging DNA, cellphone radiation is different. It could have a biological effect that would heat fat and protein molecules, like a microwave does to food, Chris explains. But there's no evidence that heating would lead to cancer.

Featured in IFL SCIence: New Model Could Show That Stephen Hawking Is Right About Black HOles

One of the lasting questions about black holes has been what happens when something falls inside. Hawking's theory suggested that though nothing can escape a black hole, particles are emitted from the outer edge of the event horizon.

“The issue was never laid to rest because Hawking’s calculation was not able to capture the effect that the radiation, called Hawking radiation, has on the black hole itself,” Adami said. “Physicists assumed that the black hole would shrink in time as the Hawking radiation carries away the black hole’s mass, but no one could verify this through mathematical calculations.”

The INformation Theory of Life

When it comes to questioning the beginnings of life, scientists and laypeople alike are left to consider vast unknowns. The only logical explanation for the existence of any form of life is that it came from other, preexisting life, right? And that presents the ultimate conundrum.

Most people think of life as a chemical event. But Adami argues that we should categorize it as information instead. By thinking about this as information, we now have a guide for calculating the odds of life. After life emerged, the genomes of living organisms began collecting information through the process of evolution, until they knew how to do things like convert sugar into energy and reproduce.

“Our DNA is an encyclopedia about the world we live in and how to survive in it,” said Adami.

The fact that humans and animals and plants survive and even proliferate hinges on their abilities to learn from their environments, and to convert that knowledge into the ability to evade a predator, for example.

That’s called information theory. More about Chris Adami’s work can be found in Quanta Magazine.

The war on Cancer: Physics Enters the Fray

Chris will be talking about how physics can help fight cancer on March 17 at the prestigious meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) in Baltimore. Adami’s presentation will be about his research paper called “Information, Physics, and Cancer.”

Many researchers have doubts that a "theory of cancer" can exist, given the fact that there are so many different cancer phenotypes. However, such a situation--many significantly different manifestations of an underlying law--is not at all uncommon in physics. Chris argues that a unified cause for all forms of cancer is possible, but that such a theory must be cast in terms of information and communication theory.

We live in exciting times. Self-driving cars are just around the corner, and we can start imagining how our daily lives will be changed by the changes in traffic, our schedule, and transportation infrastructure in general. These cars may well even be all-electric, and we may not even own them, but just hail them using an app.

We can see how in the not-so-distant future we can order a product and have it delivered by a drone within an hour. For those of use who grew up with the promises of future technology à la "The Jetsons", it seems that we are finally seeing what that future may look like.

In the Works

From potential alien life to the basic cell structure of human beings, Chris's active research projects are changing the way we think about interdisciplinary science. Read more about his current research.